Brent Kearney

For some mysterious reason, Camelbak’s marketing department dropped the term “bladder” for describing those plastic bags which go inside hydration packs. I’ll use “bladder” and “reservoir” interchangeably here.

As someone who is often training for multi-day adventure races, I go through a fair number of hydration bladders. For me, a quality hydration system is essential. You could say that I’m a hydration bladder connoisseur.

“Source” Reservoirs

In 2008, a new brand of hydration reservoir appeared at MEC, and I loved it. It was from a company in the UK, called Source. It had a unique (at the time) fold & slide mechanism for closing the bag, an idea likely borrowed from the dry bags that paddlers have been using for decades. The top of the bag is wide open, and to close it, you fold the top of the bag over, and slide a plastic bar down a rail, which seals it. It never leaked on me, despite plenty of abuse.

The big opening makes the bag easy to clean, which is essential for keeping mold/fungus/bacteria from growing on the inside of the bag. Especially after filling it with sugary sports drinks.

The Source’s bite valve allows big gulps, and it has no rubber taste. To control unwanted leakage during transport, there is a plastic cover that fits over the bite valve, attached to the hose with a string. I broke the string in short order, so just had to be careful of where I put my hose…

Overall, I found this hydration bladder simple, effective, and inexpensive. I’m not alone. During the gear check at the Full Moon in June adventure race, I discovered that all four members of my team showed up with more than one of them, and I saw other teams using them too.

Unfortunately, MEC stopped carrying them, and now only carry the Source Clear Hydration system, which has a huge screw-off cap on the front which bulges out quite a bit, making it less than ideal for squeezing into tight packs, and could be uncomfortable on the back for long runs. I haven’t seen Source products at any other stores. I don’t know the name of their 2008 version of the product, but it looks very similar to the Widepac Trail.

* * * Update: the Deuter Streamer 3.0 looks exactly the same as the one I bought at MEC in 2008.

Source Widepac Trail
Closure Mechanism
The opening used to refill and clean the reservoir.
Flavour
The lack of a rubber or plastic taste.
Bite Valve
How well the bite valve works.
Valve Leak Control
Mechanism for stopping the flow from the valve when not in use.
Durability
How tough is it?

Overall
Overall rating for the Source hydration bladder.

Camelbak Omega

Last summer I picked up a Camelbak Omega Reservoir, and the first five times I used it, it tasted like drinking from an old rubber hose. The rubber taste eventually disappeared, but I recall being annoyed that “no plastic taste” was one of their selling points, which turned out to be true only after a week of suffering. I would have returned it, but at the time, there were no alternatives in Banff and I didn’t want to drive to Calgary.

I was very reluctant to buy this hydration reservoir because of the twist-off cap, but it is fairly recessed and doesn’t stick out too much. As it turns out, the screw-off cap has not yet caused me any troubles or discomfort. The opening provided by the twist-off cap is large enough to make filling it easy, but not large enough to get my hand inside for cleaning. For this bag, I am careful never to add anything but water to it, for fear that I won’t be able to clean it sufficiently to avoid losing it to bacterial/fungal growth.

One thing I love about this product is the bite valve. Camelbak calls it the “Big Bite™ Valve”, and it does allow a generous gulp of water, saving me time and energy. Given that the main function of a hydration system is to transfer liquid from your back into your mouth, getting this right is a big win for Camelbak. Despite it’s other shortcomings, because the bite valve works so well, I like this bladder, and use it often.

Then again, the Big Bite™ Valve also allows lots of water to flow out when you don’t want it to. Like all over your shirt when the valve is squeezed by a strap on your backpack, for example.

I like the material that they used for the hose and bag. The hose doesn’t kink at all, and seems really tough. In fact, Camelbak is so confident in the toughness of the product, that they throw in a lifetime guarantee that it will not break.

Camelbak Omega
Closure Mechanism
The opening used to refill and clean the reservoir.
Flavour
The lack of a rubber or plastic taste.
Bite Valve
How well the bite valve works.
Valve Leak Control
Mechanism for stopping the flow from the valve when not in use.
Durability
How tough is it?

Overall
Overall rating for the Camelbak Omega hydration bladder.

Platypus Big Zip

Last week, I bought a new Platypus Big Zip, and so far, I’m impressed. There was no rubber taste on the first use. Platypus has scored a big win on whatever they did to get rid of the rubber taste. And importantly, they did it without BPA.

I used to hate the older Platypus hydration reservoirs, mostly because of their ziplock closure system. It was very difficult to close it in a way that stopped it from leaking fluid all over the place. This new version is similar to the Source closure mechanism, and effectively eliminates leakage and makes opening and closing easy. Platypus calls it the “SlideLock™ closure”.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Platypus valve system. On one hand, the ability to close the valve via a twisting mechanism is useful for preventing leaks during travel. On more than one occasion I’ve seen a pile of backpacks in the back of the car, and one of them, with a soggy sandwich inside, is soaked due to an accidentally open hydration pack valve. This doesn’t happen with the Platypus valve.

On the other hand, you will sometimes find that your Platypus valve is in the closed position just when you really need a sip, when you’re ripping down the side of a mountain, your white knuckles glued to your mountain-bike’s handlebars.

Another problem I have with the Platypus is that the bite-valve just doesn’t allow enough volume of liquid through per sip. It feels like I can get about twice as much in one sip from my Camelbak’s bite valve as I can from the Platypus. When you’re running hard, and therefore breathing hard, it takes considerable effort to suck water out of a hose. You have to stop breathing for a moment, forcing you to choose which you want more: air or water?

Update (June 20/2010): Now that I’ve been using this bladder for a few weeks, I have altered my opinion of it. The lack of flow through the bite valve is a much worse problem than I originally thought, so I’ve decreased that score from 3 to 1.5. It also seems to hold the taste of the previous contents for some time – the Camelbak does a much better job of not retaining flavour, so I’ve changed that score from 4 to 2.5. The open/close valve does however work quite well and I haven’t had much of a problem opening it on the go, so I’m increasing that score from 3 to 4.5.

Platypus Big Zip SL
Closure Mechanism
The opening used to refill and clean the reservoir.
Flavour
The lack of a rubber or plastic taste.
Bite Valve
How well the bite valve works.
Valve Leak Control
Mechanism for stopping the flow from the valve when not in use.
Durability
How tough is it?

Overall
Overall rating for the Platypus Big Zip SL hydration bladder.

Further Reading

For more exciting hydration bladder reviews, check out this awesome list at Trailspace.

Sam Harris recently gave a talk at the TED conference on how the scientific method can be employed to answer moral questions. It was a wonderful and thought provoking lecture! I have no idea how it relates to one of technology, entertainment, or design (TED), but who cares? :) I will return and elaborate some of my thoughts on this subject, but for now I will simply post the video, and encourage you to leave comments at Sam’s Blog.

The question I have for Sam, which I will post on this blog and hope for a reply, is: what makes him think that a super computer will never be able to help us make moral decisions? Does he think that the field of artificial intelligence is a fool’s errand, or does he subscribe to some theoretical basis for it’s limits in this regard? (I know it’s completely unrelated to the point of Sam’s talk, but I just wondered where he’s coming from with this remark!)

The Singularity Hub has published an article on professor Kevin Warwick, famous for his pioneering research in cybernetics, where he uses himself as a subject. In the video below, he describes some of his research projects, and discusses why transhumanism — the integration of technology and human biology — is such an exciting and important prospect.

[source: Silicon.com via Singularity Hub]

Kevin Kelly recently gave a TED Talk on “technology’s epic story”, the first 7 minutes of which I think provides an excellent description of the nature of humanity as the technological species. On Kelly’s account, humanity itself is a concept of our own invention, which we continue to develop as part of an overall technological ecology that he calls “The Technium”.

Although I love Kelly’s idea of The Technium and it being an extension of (our) life, and even the defining feature of our condition, I disagree with his teleological interpretation of technology in general having it’s own wants. After we develop some real independently thinking technology, then it will have intention, but up until now — sorry, not so.

My hopes for technology in the near to long term future are probably on the extreme end of the scale, when compared with average views of where technology is going. For example, I think that many of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions on the merging of technology with our own biology will probably come to pass, and I look forward to it. However, fantasizing about The Technium’s intentions, treating it like some sort of ephemeral galactic life force, is akin to worshiping gadgets.

After his story of technology as an extension of humanity, Kelly’s talk is at best confusing and at worst incoherent. For example, he defines technology as a human invention, and then goes on to describe it as predating humanity by billions of years.

My working definition of technology is anything useful that a human mind makes (7:17)… the origins and roots of technology go back to the Big Bang (7:37).

Kelly makes some very loose connections between energy, information, entropy and order, and somehow draws conclusions in cosmology and biology from it. This involves some dubious claims about the “energy density” in life being greater than that of a star, and that of a microchip being greater than everything else in the universe.

I’m not sure how this is calculated, but I suspect that if my Mac used as much energy per gram as the Sun outputs, my power bill would be more than the power bill of the entire planet combined.

Even if we accepted the numbers about the flow of energy per gram per second through stars vs microchips, what can we conclude from it? Kelly sees a general trend, placing our technology into a “7th Kingdom of Life”, which is evolving from entropy into greater order, and has been doing so independently of us from the beginning of time.

While we can all agree that technology is progressing, I prefer the simpler explanation that it is progressing from and due to human effort alone, and not a mysterious, cosmological-scale life force. In any case, Kevin Kelly’s talk is thought provoking, and well worth your next 17 minutes!

Technology news has been abuzz for the past couple of days, following Google’s dramatic announcement that it will no longer comply with the Chinese government’s demands to censor their citizen’s web searches, and if necessary, will leave China altogether. In other words, Google is leaving China. The decision follows the discovery that Google’s e-mail servers were subject to a sophisticated security break-in that appears to have been carried out by the Chinese government. The primary target of the attack was the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The confrontational announcement was posted on Google’s Blog at the end of the day, Jan 12th. By the morning, their stock had dipped 2%, but its already on the rebound.

There are 300 million Internet users in China, and three quarters of their population is not yet online. A sizable market indeed. However, as Businessweek points out, Google China was set to make only $600 million in 2010, a fraction of Google’s overall $26 billion yearly revenue. The loss is not a big one, and they reap the benefits of increased “brand equity” as Internet users everywhere revel in Google’s famous corporate motto, Don’t be Evil.

How this so-called brand equity will translate into real dollars is impossible to predict. Nevertheless, I’m sure that it was part of Google’s calculation. Many observers in the IT industry are predicting that cloud computing is positioning to become a de-facto standard for both personal and enterprise IT in the coming years. Google is probably the biggest player in cloud computing.

If I were an IT manager who is considering moving services into the cloud instead of upgrading in-house servers, which I am — even though I know that Google’s leaving China may be financially justifiable — the fact that they seem to take their security and their founding principles seriously enough to make such a bold move stands out. It makes them seem more trustworthy. Some people are even calling them heroic.

Can any amount of marketing achieve that kind of respect for a company?

In the end, decisions to move enterprise IT services to the cloud will be made by people, and Google’s China move has earned them a lot of credibility. Hearts & minds, as they say.